Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a new film starring Cillian Murphy in the titular role of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The biopic follows the story of American theoretical physicist Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” The three-hour film throws the viewers into his turbulent life, starting as a young man in the 1920s and continuing through his experience creating the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II. Although the bombings are not shown explicitly, the test bomb scene includes Oppenheimer’s famous reference to the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
“The most important person who ever lived.”
Nolan’s film is based on the 2005 biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer’s life story is dark and haunting, but above all, it was consequential. The film delves into the existentialism that plagued his later life as he regretted his most famous creation.
Ever since it hit theaters, “Oppenheimer” has been praised by film critics, holding a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Movie-goers seem to agree, since the film currently has a 93% audience score. Many praise the visual style of the flick, which switches between color and black-and-white cinematography, as well as Murphy’s gripping performance. The movie goes beyond its biographical plot as it explores Oppenheimer’s legacy. [1]
“What I wanted to do was take the audience into the mind and the experience of a person who sat at the absolute center of the largest shift in history,” Nolan said in production notes. “Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He made the world we live in, for better or for worse.” [2]
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Who was the Real J. Robert Oppenheimer?
Oppenheimer was born in 1904 to a secular Jewish family in New York City. After studying physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he went to Germany to attend University of Göttingen to learn under Max Born, who was the director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
Between 1929 and 1943, Oppenheimer taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was reportedly popular among his students due to “his striking looks, bohemian attitudes, leftist politics, and eclectic tastes.” At the same time, he began to work at the California Institute of Technology.
In 1940, Oppenheimer married Katherine “Kitty” Puening (depicted by Emily Blunt in the film) and they had two children together. Kitty worked as a laboratory technician, studying the effects of radiation on people. She was formerly a communist, an association that affected her husband after the war. However, Oppenheimer had a previous relationship with Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh) when they met at Berkeley, where she studied before attending Stanford. Oppenheimer had allegedly proposed twice to Tatlock before marrying Puening and continued an affair with her throughout his marriage. Tatlock was also a member of the Communist Party and became a psychiatrist. She tragically died after committing suicide at age 19 in 1944.
Creating the Atomic Bomb
On July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer and his colleagues launched the first atomic bomb test in history in a desert in New Mexico. The test was a success, but the Manhattan Project had seemed to take a toll on Oppenheimer’s health, after which he weighed only 115 pounds. He reportedly felt complicated about his involvement and expressed guilt and regret in later interviews. However, he seemed to distance himself from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I carry no weight on my conscience,” he said in 1961. “Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.”
Still, he felt torn up about the incident. He met with President Harry S. Truman (played by Gary Oldman in the film) who had ordered the bombings. He reportedly expressed, “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” But the meeting did not go well, and afterward, Truman said to an aide, “I don’t want to see that crybaby scientist ever again.”
The End of Oppenheimer‘s Life
“He spent the rest of his life after 1945 trying to grapple with the implications of what he had produced as a scientist,” said Bird, his biographer. “He was very intolerant of authority and arrogance, and as a result he made some powerful political enemies.” [3]
Oppenheimer openly opposed nuclear warfare, an unpopular political opinion. He was accused of being a Communist Party sympathizer because of his views and relationships with Puening, Tatlock, and his brother and close friend, who were also members of the Communist Party. Although Oppenheimer was the chairman of the General Advisory Committee for the Atomic Energy Commission, he was stripped of his security clearance. The hearing that followed delved into his communist leanings and views on nuclear warfare to discredit him. However, Oppenheimer stayed on as director of the Institute for Advanced Study and won the Enrico Fermi Award (AEC’s highest honor) in 1966. He died on February 18, 1967, from throat cancer after years of chain smoking. [4]
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Sources
- “Everything to know about Christopher Nolan’s new ‘Oppenheimer’ movie.” SF Gate. Perri Ormont Blumberg, Clint Davis. July 21, 2023
- “Here’s How Faithfully Oppenheimer Captures Its Subject’s Real Life.” Time. Megan McCluskey. July 21, 2023
- “Oppenheimer Tells the True Story of the Invention of the Atomic Bomb.” Harper’s Bazaar. Amy Mackelden. July 21, 2023
- “J. Robert Oppenheimer: Los Alamos Lab Director, Los Alamos, NM.” Atomic Heritage Foundation.